The Pursuit of Peace Without Justice in the Palestine-Israel Conflict Is Little More than an Absurd Debate Concerning the Peace Process’ Exact Hour of Death

Speaking before an emergency meeting of the Palestinian Central Council, held the 15th of January 2018, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pronounced the death of the once celebrated Oslo Accords, declaring:

Today is the day that the Oslo Accords end. Israel killed them. We are an authority without any authority, and an occupation without any cost. Trump threatens to cut funding to the authority because negotiations have failed. When the hell did negotiations start?!

Soon afterward, Abbas expressed similar sentiments in Cairo at a summit for the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The historically observant cannot help but contemplate the hollowness with which such a statement rings in reference to a long moribund peace-process, stillborn even and doomed to fail from the start.

Analysis

In his modern classic, “A Rose for Emily,” preeminent American novelist William Faulkner relates the story of Emily Grierson, a reclusive spinster of aristocratic lineage unable to cope with the prospect of losing the man she loves, albeit unrequited. After his sudden disappearance, the man is discovered decades later a rotting corpse atop a bed clearly shared by Emily. It is this pathological refusal to let go, as Emily cleaves to the decaying body of her would-be lover while stubbornly denying the tragic reality that is now her life, which reminds me so much of the recent proclamation by President Abbas.

Regarding the peace-plan’s exact time of death, there exist multiple accounts. However, the following words from Oxford historian Avi Schlaim are illustrative:

The [Palestinian Leadership] believed that in return for giving up their claim to 78% of historic Palestine, they would gain an independent state in the remaining 22%, with a capital city in Jerusalem. They were to be bitterly disappointed.

Controversy surrounded Oslo from the moment it saw the light of day. The 21 October 1993 issue of the London Review of Books ran two articles; Edward Said put the case against in the first. He called the agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles”, arguing that it set aside international legality and compromised the fundamental national rights of the Palestinian people. It could not advance genuine Palestinian self-determination because that meant freedom, sovereignty, and equality, rather than perpetual subservience to Israel.

In my own article I put the case for Oslo (adds Schlaim). I believed that it would set in motion a gradual but irreversible process of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and that it would pave the way to Palestinian statehood. From today’s perspective…, it is clear that Said was right in his analysis and I was wrong.

Schlaim goes on to remark that “the fundamental reason [for failure] was that Israel reneged on its side of the deal” when in 1996 Binyamin Netanyahu came to power soon after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. He “spent his first three years as PM in a largely successful attempt to arrest, undermine, and subvert the accords.”

Whether stillborn from the start or the deliberate result of right-wing infanticide, the peace process has been dead for decades. And yet the various players have been insistent upon living amongst its corpse, raising the question: “Why cleave so fervently to the specter of a long dead peace-plan?” For the Israelis and their benefactors, Schlaim remarks:

[Negotiating in bad faith] turned the much-vaunted peace process into a charade. In fact, it was worse than a charade: it provided Israel with just the cover it was looking for to continue to pursue with impunity its illegal and aggressive colonial project on the West Bank.

A popular Palestinian reading of history might say this was the intent of Oslo from its inception, granting international legitimacy to the occupation while simultaneously allowing Israel to “pass the buck” with regard to its administration and securitization of the Occupied Territories. For Palestinian leadership, on the other hand, the existence of the Palestinian Authority represents the sole shiny trinket – the pretense of a state – granted to the Palestinian national movement in exchange for 78% of historic Palestine and the pacification of the 22% that remained, under occupation. That Abbas, whose sole legitimacy rests upon his being president of an “authority without any authority,” would cling so fervently and for so many years to the illusion of a long dead peace-process raises serious questions with regard to his authenticity as leader of the Palestinians as well as to the Authority’s long-term viability. But, when confronted with such loss, sometimes a person must cling to the only thing s/he has left.

For the Palestinian church, the governing image had become that of Liberation and the pursuit of Justice as integral to the achievement of peace – the tangible manifestations of God’s Reign “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Ultimately, each has much to learn from the other, as does the wider non-Christian society from the witness of both. For only a supernatural hope can sustain one in the most seemingly hopeless of situations. Yet, the world is not as it should be. And, it is our scriptural mandate “to put effort into changing the world as it is into the world as it should be.” It is precisely this confident hope in the resurrection described above that allows one to cling less tightly to the things of this world and get creative with regard to its transformation.

Ultimately, can peace ever be built without justice or the acknowledgment of harm? The promised peace of Oslo failed precisely because the justice sought by the Palestinians never materialized. As Said alluded to above, peace without justice remains little more than surrender. Meanwhile, the pursuit of justice without mercy falls easily prey to never ending cycles of vengeance and intractability. Now that the peace process has been declared dead, are we to mourn? Or, will such a reckoning allow for the opening up of creative possibilities for the establishment of justice and peace for all diverse peoples between the river and the sea?

“Mercy and truth are met together; justice and peace have kissed” (Ps 85:10).

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Founded in 1960 in the hills overlooking Beirut, the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary (ABTS) equips servant-leaders for the ministry challenges arising in the Middle East and North Africa – be it theology, apologetics, communication, pastoral care, ethics, society, or culture.

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